indifference as some grand poet who views them both merely as
ministrants to his art, yet he never betrayed any positive breach of
honesty in himself. He could laugh over the story of some ingenious
fraud that he had witnessed, and seem insensible to its turpitude; but
he spoke of it in the tone of an approving witness, not of an actual
accomplice. As we grew more intimate, he felt gradually, however, that
pudor, or instinctive shame, which the contact with minds habituated to
the distinctions between wrong and right unconsciously produces, and
such stories ceased. He never but once mentioned his family, and that
was in the following odd and abrupt manner:--

"Ah!" cried he one day, stopping suddenly before a print-shop, "how that
reminds me of my dear, dear mother."

"Which?" said I, eagerly, puzzled between an engraving of Raffaelle's
"Madonna" and another of "The Brigand's Wife."

Vivian did not satisfy my curiosity, but drew me on in spite of my
reluctance.

"You loved your mother, then?" said I, after a pause. "Yes, as a whelp
may a tigress."

"That's a strange comparison."

"Or a bull-dog may the prize-fighter, his master! Do you like that
better?"

"Not much; is it a comparison your mother would like?"